Children have always enjoyed special status in Italy.They are loved, dressed in the finest of clothes, spoiledwith toys and sweet things. When the family is assembledin the evening for dinner or out taking a walkthrough the neighbourhood, the kids are naturallyalways taken along, no matter how late it may be. It istherefore all the more surprising that today hardly anychildren are born in the paradise of bambini. Shortlyafter the War, the fertility rate in Italy was 2.3, evenreaching a level of 2.7 in 1964, a figure well above thereplacement level, Italian fertility rates began to plungein the 1970s. Having reached a historic low of 1.19 in1995, in 2006 the figure rose again — thanks mainly toimmigrants from abroad — to 1.35, a figure on the lowerend of the scale by international comparison.35 AlthoughItalians wish to have an average of 1.9 children, the onechildfamily has just about become the rule.

There are, though, substantial differences within thecountry: Women in Sardinia have on average no morethan 1.04 children. The Mediterranean island thus ranksfar behind the neighbouring French island of Corsica,France’s lowest-fertility region, and just above thelowest-fertility regions in all of Europe, the remote ruralregions of Galicia and Asturia in northwest Spain. Butthe fertility rate in Liguria, the Italian coastal regionlocated around Genoa and bordering on the French Côted’Azur, is no higher than 1.17 and thus weighs heavilyon the Italian average. The frontrunner when it comes tofertility is the economically successful northern autonomousprovince of Bolzano, which reports a rate of 1.58.The next-best figures, though, are reported for structurallyweak regions in Italy’s south: 1.42 in Campania, theregion around the Gulf of Naples, and 1.4 in Sicily.